


Manning the Lines

by nijireiki



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drift Compatibility, Gen, J-Tech, LOCCENT, PPDC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-03-08 04:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3195938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nijireiki/pseuds/nijireiki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We've all got our reasons for taking on the roles we play. Tendo Choi didn't stumble into his by accident or as a second choice.</p><p>Pacific Rim POC Week 2014, day 2: <em>Drift Compatible</em>:</p><blockquote>
  <p>"Who do you think would be drift compatible with who? If they are already compatible with someone else (e.g., Mako and Raleigh), who else could they possibly be drift compatible with?"</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Manning the Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Tendo Choi POV, mostly pre-film-- post-K-Day leading up to Raleigh Becket's recruitment/re-enlistment.
> 
> Teen rating for language.
> 
> _reposted from[Tumblr](http://princessnijireiki.tumblr.com/post/93649083169/pacific-rim-poc-week-tendo-choi-drift); prev. titled "PACIFIC RIM POC WEEK: Tendo Choi ; Drift Compatible."_

The Beckets had asked him once. Or, rather, Raleigh had-- he was the more inquisitive mind of two. Yancy was more outgoing, and quicker with a fresh remark (or at least he was when Raleigh wasn't ghosting him; though it was hard to tell, them being brothers and all, if sometimes that funny Yancy look Raleigh got on his face was just a learned family resemblance), but even though Raleigh was hardly shy, he was the one more likely to sit quietly, and think up questions.

Stuff like: "Hey _Ten_ do," in that strange patchwork drawl the boys had, one part pure suburban cornbread from his folks, one part half-rez half-hick that seemed to cling from all the kids and teenagers mixing together from needing to line up for rations and shelter living so near the coast, one part secondhand military brat tendencies even civilians had picked up with so much traffic to Alaska, even now. "How come you never went out to be a Ranger?"

"Yeah," Yancy had echoed. "No glory in riding a desk, old man. Won't get you far down at that greasy spoon, saying you hail from _LOCCENT_." It wasn't derision in his voice, but there was a definite playfully accusatory tone of _nerd_ hidden in there, like Tendo was working more with binary code than with engines and pistons. Yance knew better, but it was a joke they shared, and Tendo raised an eyebrow, mouth quirking in a halfway grin.

"You know, kiddos, not all of us are in it for the _glory_. One day, you squirts'll learn to appreciate everything I do for you around here-- even a pair of fuckin' _hot dogs_ like you, Becket boys."

Yancy laughed first, but Raleigh was the first one to crack a grin and reply back. "Fuck you, Tendo!" Tendo laughed, then. When those two had first come to the Icebox, Raleigh hadn't even been 18 yet, still wet behind the ears and hilariously flustered by the coarse (often polyglot) language of the engineering staff, in comparison to the stiff-lipped PPDC brass and the genial intimidation from pilot candidates-in-training and established Rangers with seniority on base. They'd all three of them been there for the official ribbon-cutting for the Shatterdome they'd been staying at as it had its finishing construction done around them. But just like the building had finally been broken in and the Beckets' own blue lady had been christened, Raleigh had grown into the rapport this little Alaskan family had made. Including the occasional sprinkling of four-letter words here and there for flavor.

Still, the conversation's pace accelerated, thanks to the elder Becket. He was still younger than Tendo by a few years, about as much distance between Choi and him as between Yancy and his own brother (when Raleigh had first noticed that, he'd gotten a particularly focused look on his face, that Tendo came to recognize from when Raleigh would frame photos up in his mind before taking a snapshot-- seeing where all the lines converged perfectly in advance). But he had a way of cutting through to the meat of a matter, and it definitely made for a colorful game of things sometimes. "Glory, my ass," Yancy had snorted. "You're in it for the merchandising."

" _What?!_ "

"You're in it for-- the goddamn toys-- the action figures--"

Tendo had thrown his head back and _roared_ with laughter, and Raleigh had hooted, " _The shoes!_ Don't forget the shoes--"

"Face it, Choi boy," Yancy got out past a rolling chuckle. "You're as much of a hot dog as the fuckin' rest of us. You're just naming the cartoon villains."

"O-fuckin'-kay, Batman and Robin. Jesus Christ. Somebody's gotta come up with some shit for the propaganda posters, huh?"

Raleigh became nearly incomprehensible through his teary giggles, clutching a stitch in his side. "...Light-up sneakers."

Fast forward a year. The Wei Tang triplets' Jaeger had finally been completed. They were the only Rangers besides the Beckets younger than Tendo himself. They had a full year on him in Alaska, but they were five and a half years his junior, far quicker at Cantonese than he could ever hope to be, and had laughed just like the 17 year olds they were getting him to fuck up his tones to accidentally walk into dirty puns. They would be facing down multiton monsters whose dimensions would be constantly seared into Tendo's attention now, even stationed across the Pacific from where he was in the Americas. They would always, in some ways, be 17 to him, even though they'd had a birthday shortly after meeting him, had bragged about being grown men and having chain-smoked for years but getting plastered off of cheap liquor and having killer hangovers the next day, fighting things with names like Reckoner and Yamarashi.

Tendo never forgot that. Trespasser had made that mark on him, three nukes dropped on civilians by a country in desperation had done that, had aged him beyond his years. Usually, Tendo could stave it off, but sometimes it caught up to him.

He thought about the sneakers remark from time to time, seeing the Wei brothers' sportswear commercials and their PSAs for inner-city youth fitness centers, wearing glossy shell-toes and matching jumpsuits.

Another year after that, Stacks had asked him the same question, but for different reasons. Another man they both knew, another Ranger-- his _son_ was enlisting in the Academy. Hercules Hansen. Herc's brother had been dismissed from the Jaeger program, not the first pilot to make an ass of himself, but one of the first whose vices had caught up to and then surpassed his duties. Maybe it was his personality. Maybe it was something he'd had to deal with before everything, and it had just built up. Maybe it was something souring inside the man after all the fighting, and all the destruction. Maybe it was the fame going to his head. The glory.

Herc hadn't talked about it, and Tendo hadn't pressed the issue. Everyone had demons of their own to contend with, and weights to carry now. Everyone had pasts. Relationships had less to do with that now than with other bonds. It didn't matter how old you were, really-- there was before K-Day and after it, now, and the ones old enough to vote _before_ hadn't really anticipated another generation coming of age _after_. Tendo was born a dozen years after Hansen, nearly halfway between himself and his son. He'd chuckled, picturing Raleigh's face lining them up, Tendo the Beckets' elder, the Hansens' buffer, the youngest musketeer of three after Herc and Stacker. But very quietly, more to himself than anything. He was the only one of the men now sitting at the table in the abandoned mess hall without a child of his own.

The table was gouged and scraped up after only three years of abuse. Someone had scratched something into it in crude Japanese, probably someone's kid, given the quality of the hiragana. Tendo couldn't focus enough to read it, distracted by Stacker's question. (He'd've liked to have been distracted by scotch, or maybe tequila; but considering how Scott had gotten dismissed in the first place, considering Stacker's medications, considering Tendo's round-the-clock job, considering, considering, considering. Maybe one day, maybe someday, maybe they'd all get to share a drink. But Herc's kid was signing up to be a Ranger now, younger even than the Weis had been. Someday might never come. Someday might not even come for young Chuck. Chuck wouldn't even know what that meant, really; he might be angry, he might have regret, but he was just a kid. He couldn't know what it was he was missing out on, and that made everything worse.)

"You never wanted to be a Ranger, Tendo?" Stacks dropped the _Mr. Choi_ and _Commander_ formalities every so often, when he was most raw. It was rare. Tendo wondered what he'd been like before everything, sometimes, but it was as fruitless as wondering about what a stiff drink would've been like with him now. But a question from Stacker Pentecost demanded an answer, whether as a Marshall to an officer, or as one man to another. They were friends, of a sort, closer than other friends Tendo'd had by far-- but since they'd chosen each other, were linked by their respective missions, it was a bond that didn't need matching backgrounds, or shared interests, nothing like that. Brothers-in-arms felt too impersonal, though it's what all three men were. Bonded through shared miseries, through nostalgia over shitty Walkman cassette players and freeze pops and _fish_ for dinner every so often, walking on the beach, life without HazMat suits and Geiger counters. Things that didn't exist anymore. Things they could acknowledge, sharing in that they would never, ever be allowed to grieve for them. The brotherhood of dull aches.

Pentecost had approached Tendo when he first arrived in Alaska, green as anything but as seasoned as his elders, clapped him on his shoulder, and told him how admirable his service in San Francisco had been. The rescue work hadn't been on Tendo's resumé. Mackie must've said some nice things in his reference letter, or Stacker'd done his research, but Tendo had been floored. He'd heard rumors about the man's sister dying in the attacks, had seen the coverage of Onibaba like everyone else had, the man dragging a robot, a copilot, and a miracle child looking far younger than her age sobbing in his arms. Tendo hadn't asked Stacker about it, but on one of Stacks's raw days, sitting by himself, Tendo had come over with a carafe of coffee and two mugs. "I was with my grandfather when he went, you know. Blue and the bombs. Probably more the Blue, with how fast it was."

Stacker had just looked at him, and Tendo continued. "Other folks, you know, I wasn't there for. Just found the bodies, when we were handling waste, or in the hospital, or whatever. Some of 'em, I never even seen buried. Or you just don't ever hear from 'em again. ...It doesn't get easier. There's no more closure one way or the other. Not for the people left standing. But the people on their way out-- if they're ready, it's easier for _them_. It's one of those things."

Several seconds passed, with Tendo standing next to the table in the dimly lit room. Stacker reached for a mug. "I think I'll have some of that coffee, Mr. Choi."

" _Salúd._ " And they'd sat together and it had just been another bruise they both had in the same spot.

But this was a bruise Tendo couldn't really do anything for. Herc was mourning the life Chuck would never have; Stacker knew where that pain could or would sit on his own heart, one day, with Mako; and Tendo's job was to watch. He was good at his work. But he couldn't shoulder everyone's pain like that and then... drop it. Spill it onto another person. It was his burden. Binary and cartoon villains and watching lives flake away like corroding metal. Sharing that was... incomprehensible. All Tendo could think to say was, "It's one of those things."

With his eyes stern and level, Stacker looked at him, and then finally nodded, slowly. Tendo knew he didn't understand. Stacker-- Stacker could cut himself off from certain things, could make id, superego, and ego all live for the cause. It was selflessness in pursuit of a goal, as pure and simple as anything that could ever exist. But Tendo was messier, and Stacker could understand that. Leaders knew others weren't all like them, or even like each other. They both cared, but Tendo did it by overflowing, and they all had seen from experience, sometimes coloring outside the lines was dangerous for the people who depended on you.

 _Herc's_ eyes had been red, face raw from crying. The other two men hadn't done him the disrespect of judging him for it, but they were all honest enough not to pretend it hadn't happened. "Watch out for him, would ya?" His voice was hoarse, quiet, not pleading, really, but insistent. "Keep a weather eye. He's the only one I've got, y'know?" That was Herc's way. He wouldn't say "father," he wouldn't say "son," he wouldn't say "please." It was his way of keeping himself glued together under pressure. It was one of those things.

They all had threads they needed not to unravel.

"You know it," Tendo replied.

"No better eyes in the sky," Stacker added, resting a hand on Herc's sagging shoulder under his uniform blues.

"Always."

Herc and Chuck were back in Sydney before Christmas. They had the flagship Mark 5 Jaeger in the world fleet ready and waiting for them, and Herc said his final goodbyes to the Lucky Seven alongside the Beckets. Tendo watched them in Manila, even though Chuck was still safe in his own Shatterdome. It was his job, and, moreover, they were his family. It was the only one he had, too.

Months later. Less than a _quarter_ of a year. Tendo was in Alaska. The Gages were in Alaska. The Beckets were in Alaska.

So was Knifehead.

It had been a fairly obvious name, really, catchy, handier than a string of numbers in the computer for the 3D display to render. Same as the Jaegers were named, so it wasn't Mark3Model4USATeamBecketYBecketR and whatever random string of numbers for the PONS OS. It was Gipsy Danger. It was the Becket Boys. It was Tendo, my _man_ , and how did that date go last night? And they were _finishers_. They handled business, the three of them.

(Always three men, Tendo noted later, sadly. That night, Herc had been the one to lay a hand on Tendo's shoulder, Stacker had been the one to take responsibility onto himself, make what meager promises men like them were able to make, the ones they were able to keep.)

The Beckets had never failed. They'd never fallen. Hell, Knifehead was a fast fuck, fastest Kaiju on record-- Tendo's contributions to the programming in LOCCENT had been to adjust for flexible adaptability, "learning" computations to allow for the "impossible," how each Kaiju seemed to have a different tactic for attack, and each one was bigger than the last. That, more than the nicknaming, was part of why he was so in demand to consult for other Shatterdomes. Maybe Tendo _was_ a bit of a hot dog, at that point. Maybe he'd gotten a bit too big for his britches, that he could be as confident in the Beckets as they were in themselves, even though he should've known better. He'd seen Trespasser. Three nukes. The last one, with 75 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. "Little Boy," meet the big boys. Big boys, meet some next level alien monster shit, badder than the billy goats that crossed the bridge before it. The day would come when they fell short.

Maybe hot-dogging was a young man's game, and that's why Stacker had no patience for it, why it was back to the _Mister Choi_ s and _Marshall Pentecost_ s even at two AM, even with the Gages unharmed, but still having been unable to take Knifehead down the hour before. Sure, it was the Miracle Mile. But this was the Gipsy Danger, this was the Beckets, this was Choi on top of his game rewriting code to keep up with Kaiju signatures in real-time. Maybe it was just the optimism of young men. Maybe he was still too green, even now.

Tendo had been the optimist, in the end, and the Beckets the hot dogs. Their hearts were good; that had never been the question. They were young enough not to believe in the abrupt injustice of death, and Tendo had smiled, even then. Stacker had first told them to leave, and then changed that to take the boat and leave, because part of him wanted to believe in a world where people could avoid those deaths, too. But then it all went to shit.

And Yancy died. And he was unfinished. He had left things unsaid. It was one of those things.

And Raleigh carried Yancy inside of him, he would always be ghosting now, for however long "always" would be. Tendo'd outlived people younger than him, but none he'd taken under his wing like that. He'd never lost a younger sibling, the way the Beckets had been surrogate brothers to him, so unlike everyone he grew up with. Stacker and Tendo would have that same bruise now. It was one of those things.

"Always" wouldn't be very long. He'd never lost a Ranger. He'd never lost two Rangers at once. He'd never seen a Jaeger so badly mangled. One of those things.

Raleigh fished off a coast somewhere, ghosted into a man who was dead, and half dead man himself, drifting with the husk of a dead metal fist and a phantom copilot inside him. One of those things. A bruise all his own, beyond Herc, beyond Stacker. Beyond Tendo.

Knifehead was on the news, alright.

But Knifehead was on no posters, no t-shirts, made no snappy action replays or doggie chew toys.

Tendo's head was an ugly place, full of things with ugly names, that killed good people, and promised the survivors the same fate for their children. He was overflowing again, constantly now. He couldn't imagine cutting that in half, pouring it onto someone when they would get half of his knowledge that they could die, half of his memory of Yancy Becket screaming, Raleigh Becket screaming back into a yawning void in Gipsy Danger's chromed skull, lights flickering out on LOCCENT displays. Raleigh sometimes there and sometimes not, even when they'd found him, the burns from his brother's death living inside him like it was his own interfering with new circuits reading a body with either two souls or half of one inside it.

Raleigh was dismissed.

Stacker never asked Tendo about applying to be a Ranger again.

It wouldn't have mattered if he had, anyway. The next four years were deaths upon deaths upon deaths. Pilots falling forever. A Jaeger graveyard. That bruise blooming across Stacker's life when Mako Mori enlisted at the Icebox. The PPDC telling them to give up, to stop fighting entirely, to stop watching out for each other, each others' sons and daughters. Loving and being so, so, so afraid to love Alison, knowing what could happen, and both of them arming the monster made in man's image, assessing damage when the monsters came back home, or didn't. Not needing to struggle for the words for that feeling. One of those things.

The shadow of that dull ache on Tendo: Alison was pregnant. Alison having the baby. A future behind a wall, if any, a war that bureaucrats were saying to give up on, to wait out until their enemies grew tired of throwing punches. How awful it was-- how much worse-- that Tendo's son would grow up in a world where he would never be able to end up like Raleigh Becket. For good or ill. Because all he would know in order to survive would be cowering, when he could fight for his life, and the world, if not for the law-- if not for rich men more invested in their own money and their own private anti-Kaiju shelters than in humanity's fighting chance.

The baby was born. He would not be one of those things. Not if Tendo had anything to say about it. Or Herc. Or Stacker, either.

Maybe that was the closest to drifting Tendo got, these men who shared his memories and his fears and his future, the children they wanted to defend and who they needed to defend them, the people they loved, and the people who loved them. Maybe they were men who only had so much sharing they could do, and maybe Tendo's job was to connect with the machines that would be their salvation from the outside rather than from within. To always be the third man.

In any case, Marshall Stacker Pentecost's job was to ask hard questions, and everyone else's job was to answer. Herc Hansen's job was to not say the things you needed not to hear, to keep you afloat on what would buoy you up in the hard times. Raleigh Becket reappeared out of the rains over the Pacific just as he'd dissolved into the snow, a new spark in his eye, a new heart in his armor, a new soul to fight alongside him. And a new bruise emerged in Tendo that he embraced ferociously, because the alternative was that much worse, the soul whose job was to watch over other souls, always the ferryman, always the eyes in the sky.

It was one of those things.


End file.
